Recent advances indicate intimate relationships if not superimposition amongst the neuroanatomies of appetite, sexual behavior, monoamine transmission, and pituitary hormones. My primary focus will be on appetite and obesity. Sex, monoamines, and the pituitary will be studied as they relate to appetite regulation. My working hypothesis is that the ventral noradrenergic bundle mediates satiety, as cutting or lesioning the ventral bundle produces obesity. Retrograde exploration will seek the anatomical origin of the obesity effect, first from the areas where the ventral bundle originates. Antegrade exploration points to the pituitary modulating factors, gonadotrophins, and the adrenals. Improved brain lesioning techniques are needed to accomplish this work. Exploration into the chemistry of electrolytic lesioning suggests a lesion technique that will destroy cells but spare fibers of passage. This will be a companion to knife cuts which cut fibers but spare cells. I will continue to make these lesions and cuts asymmetrically so as to map neural systems rather than isolated loci. I also propose to explore a precise amino acid dietary therapy for obesity. Amino acids consumed at the start of a meal tend to get through the liver into the systemic circulation. Neutral amino acids compete with one another for transport into the brain. Brain levels of the neutral amino acid tyrosine regulate the rate of catechol synthesis, which may influence catecholamine transmission. The catecholamine noradrenalin appears to be the synaptic transmitter involved in satiety. If all these links hold up then an horsd'oeuvre of tyrosine should satiate, while a mix of competing neutral amino acids horsd'oeuvre should whet the appetite. Finally, I propose to continue studying the influence of fluid temperatures on the rate and amount of fluid intake. This work suggests many interesting applications concerning infant feeding.